Thoroughly modern pope detailed the crucial links between faith and reason

By Scott LaFeeSTAFF WRITER

April 3, 2005

PLINIO LEPRI / Associated Press

The pope believed that theology could benefit from science, as does Jesuit brother and astronomer Guy Consolmagno, who was working at the Vatican Observatory on the outskirts of Rome.

The year is 1633; the place, Rome. Galileo Galilei, an
Italian scientist already renowned for his major
contributions to physics and astronomy, stands accused of publicly supporting the idea that the Earth is not the center of the universe, that in fact the planet revolves around the sun.

Fast forward 364 years. The year is 1997, the place still Rome, but the pope is an altogether different sort of fellow.

He is John Paul II, and he has just been told about discoveries made by Galileo, a spacecraft investigating Jupiter and its moons.

His reaction: "Wow!"

In the three-plus centuries between Urban VIII and John Paul II, something obviously happened inside the Roman Catholic Church, a shift in thinking that no longer viewed science as a threat to faith, but rather as a source of wonderment.

The change did not happen overnight, but significant credit for it must be attributed to John Paul II, the last pope of the second millennium, whose eyes and mind were clearly locked on the third.

To be sure, Pope John Paul II was a theologian first, spiritual leader to more than 65 million Catholics in the United States and more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide.

But he was also a thoroughly modern man, a keen observer of science and true believer in its possibilities. The writings and speeches of John Paul II repeatedly emphasize his opinion that science was a vital human endeavor, a means to find truth.

Three episodes help illustrate that
belief.

In 1979, near the beginning of his pontificate, John Paul set in motion efforts to rectify the church's condemnation of Galileo.

Galileo (1564-1642) is legendary for his work in physics, his studies of objects in motion and his discovery of Jupiter's moons using the first astronomical telescope.

What got him into trouble with the Roman Catholic Church was his strong and vocal support of Copernicus and the revolutionary theory that the Earth orbited the sun.

The church believed otherwise, its view based upon the work of a Greek astronomer named Ptolemy more than 1,000 years earlier.

Galileo's public commentaries – caustic and plentiful – were impossible to ignore. They brazenly contradicted conventional interpretations of the Holy Scriptures, which were then universally believed to be the supreme authority on all matters of science, as well as everything else. The Bible, for example, talked of the sun staying its course at the prayer of Joshua and the Earth being ever immovable. Thus Copernican theory – and Galileo's fervent support of it – was deemed anti-Scriptural, though Galileo considered himself to be a devout Catholic.

In truth, Galileo simply thought science was separate from faith, but angry ecclesiastical authorities accused the astronomer of heresy. Urban VIII summoned Galileo to Rome where, eventually, he was ordered to publicly renounce Copernicus' ideas, or face torture and burning at the stake as a heretic.

Galileo, then nearly 70 years old, did as he was told.

For John Paul II, the church's refusal to absolve Galileo for the next three centuries was wrong and embarrassing. Galileo had been right to support Copernicus. But more important, John Paul believed the church's behavior had helped create an egregious, enduring schism between faith and science.

"The Galileo case was the symbol of the church's supposed rejection of scientific progress, or of dogmatic obscurantism opposed to the free search for truth," John Paul told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1981. "This myth has played a considerable cultural role. It has helped to anchor a number of scientists of good faith in the idea that there was an incompatibility between the spirit of science and its rules of research on the one hand and the Christian faith on the other."

Eleven years later, a special Vatican commission publicly agreed, conceding that the church had erred. The response from outsiders tended toward amused sarcasm. "It's official," declared one headline in the Toronto Star, "the Earth revolves around the sun, even for the Vatican."

Such ridicule, however, did not affect Pope John Paul II. He was more interested in the truth, in pushing the church closer to his vision of an appropriate relationship with science.

In John Paul's world view, pure reason and pure faith sought the same things: knowledge and understanding. Science, said the pope, was a way to answer questions about the physical world and universe. The answers would necessarily be focused and particular because science demanded evidence that could be observed, measured, reproduced. Religion, on the other hand, dealt with subjects less tangible. It offered context and meaning where science could not.

"There exist two realms of knowledge," he wrote, "one which has its source in Revelation and one which reason can discover by its own power. To the latter belong especially the experimental sciences and philosophy. The distinction between the two realms of knowledge ought not to be understood as opposition. The two realms are not altogether foreign to each other, they have points of contact."

Theology benefits from science by acquiring an improved knowledge of how the world works, John Paul observed.

Galileo might not have suffered church sanction if religious authorities had better understood Copernican theory. By the same token, said John Paul, science benefits from expanded discourse with theology by becoming more fully integrated into human culture and its concerns for ultimate meaning and value.

In 1996, Pope John Paul II again illustrated his faith in science by formally declaring that "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis."

The observation, made again to the lay Pontifical Academy of Sciences, was notable, but not wildly extraordinary. Pope Pius XII had declared evolution to be "a serious hypothesis" in 1950. Most Catholic schools in the United States routinely teach the subject. And unlike some fundamentalist Christian religions, the Catholic Church does not interpret the Bible as a literal history.

John Paul's remarks earned him scathing criticism from fundamentalists and others, who claimed he was repudiating the story of Creation. But others welcomed the pope's comments.

"By this very clever move of the pope," said Giulio Giorello, a professor of philosophy at the University of Milan, "it will allow Darwinism to be studied not as a hypothesis, but as a real scientific truth, which will allow discussions on crucial issues such as bioethics."

Two years later, John Paul produced his crowning encyclical titled "Faith and Reason," in which he describes the ancient, urgent need of people to seek truth and understanding, to solve fundamental questions such as "Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going?"

Finding answers, the pope said, would not come solely through either faith or science. The whole truth required the participation and influence of both. "There is no reason for competition of any kind between reason and faith," John Paul II wrote. "Each contains the other, and each has its own scope for action."